Oil skimmers for removing oil and other hydrocarbons from surfaces of bodies of water and other liquids are known in the art. One application for these skimmers is in production and tooling centers in which machining operations are performed that use machine tool coolant. During these types of operations, a material amount of oil, metal chips and coolant is directed to a collection tank.
Various oil skimmer styles have been employed to remove oil from water surfaces. Styles of conventional skimmers include belt type oil skimmers, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,378,371 to Hobson, issued Jan. 3, 1995, and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,645,733 to Hobson, issued Jul. 8, 1997. The '371 patent and the '733 patent are hereby incorporated by reference in their respective entireties. While oil skimmers of belt and other types have been relatively successful in removing oil from water surfaces, they do not address the issue of metal chips that accumulate within a coolant collection tank as a consequence of machining operations.
Metal chips that accumulate on the floor of a collection tank are not affected by the operation of conventional oil skimmers. To prevent a prohibitive quantity of chip build-up on the floor of the tank, an operator must periodically remove the accumulated chips. The chips must be manually removed by a shovel or other suitable tool. Consequently, this type of manual removal requires undesired labor hours and may increase machine down time within these machining centers.
Accordingly, a need exists in the art for a novel and improved oil and chip skimmer for automatic removal of paramagnetic metal chips and hydrocarbons from a collection tank.